2381/11708922.v1
Adam Elliot Cooper
Adam Elliot
Cooper
Phil Hubbard
Phil
Hubbard
Loretta Lees
Loretta
Lees
Sold Out? The Right to Buy, Gentrification and Working Class Displacements in London
University of Leicester
2020
Right to buy
Gentrification
working class
displacement
class
ethnicity
2020-02-24 10:31:33
Journal contribution
https://figshare.le.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Sold_Out_The_Right_to_Buy_Gentrification_and_Working_Class_Displacements_in_London/11708922
Since the 1990s, the renewal of council housing estates in London has involved widespread
‘decanting’ of resident populations to allow for demolition and redevelopment, primarily by
private developers who sell the majority of new housing at market rate. This process of decanting
has displaced long-term council tenants and shorter-term ‘temporary’ tenants, with many not
able to return to the estate. In contrast, those leaseholders who bought under the ‘right-to-buy’
legislation introduced in the 1980s have a ‘right to remain’ by virtue of the property rights they
have. Nonetheless, given the threat that their property will ultimately be subject to compulsory
purchase because the redevelopment of the estate is in the ‘public interest’, these leaseholders
experience similar displacement pressures to other residents. Describing these pressures, this
article argues that the right-to-buy legislation offered these residents the illusion of entering a
property-owning middle-class, but that they were never able to escape the labelling of council
estates as stigmatised spaces which have ultimately been seized by the state and capital in a
moment of ‘accumulation by dispossession’.